Love and Hate
by clover bookcat
Summary: They may not be able to see, or they might not want to see, but everyone else does. MangaQuestShipping.


**A/N: Yes, I am well aware of my procrastination. Please don't remind me. *shifty eyes***

**I seem to come up with a lot of my Mangaquest oneshots and drabbles at LJ. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but hey. I was originally not going to place this here, but I ended up shrugging my shoulders and giving it the general 'meh, good enough'. The length bothers me and I tacked a bit more onto it, but it still turned out a bit short. Oh, well.**

**Disclaimer: I. Do. Not. Own. And if you can't get that down, I'll have Togetaro ram it into your head with his awesome athletic skills!**

* * *

_Do you hate him?_

The question is asked blandly, as if without a care in the world, to the receiver. The girl with the twin pigtails looks up from her work, a puzzled expression on her face.

The pretty girl flicks her long brown hair back over one shoulder, and the other girl now notices the slightly mischievous glint in her eye. She immediately sets up her mental walls, for she knows that this does not bode well for the recipient, and in this case it is her.

She asks, politely, what the brunette means.

"I think it's a rather straightforward question," she muses. "You two are always arguing. But Mew forbid that I ever saw you two dissolve back into mild conversation. I was just wondering if you really dislike him that much."

Dislike? Her, for him?

She pauses in shuffling the papers on her desk. She had never considered it. Her verbal – and physical – responses to his rather lewd commentary had always been automatic, and neither had ever brought it up as a point of debate. For them, it was a norm.

This does not shake off her opponent, who simply gives her a knowing look.

So she fingers a strand of navy hair as she contemplates, trying to find a better way to describe it. It is not hate, she decides. They have had too long a partnership, been through too many trials, to call it that any longer. They've saved the other's life so many times that she herself as lost track. It's no longer something they concern themselves about, and this is something she is sure would not be the case with enemies. She says this aloud, and the other girl clicks her tongue impatiently.

"Yes, but then what do you call it?"

The pigtailed girl cocks her head. She says to the brunette that she doesn't know. To herself, she's not sure she wants to know. Now is not the time.

The brunette stomps her foot, puts her hands on her hips, and blows a strand of hair out of her face in an impish manner. It reminds the blue-haired girl of the little children at the orphanage when one has a tantrum, and disconcerts her that such an older girl would resemble such a one. As is true to her nature, she asks what is the matter.

The other girl rolls her eyes. "Oh, you're just as clueless as Red is sometimes, you know that?"

* * *

_Do you love her?_

He glances up at the little child standing above him, arms crossed, a no-nonsense expression planted firmly in the line of his mouth. He's seen that expression before on a different face, and it never means well for him.

He pointedly asks what the hell the man is on about.

"Exactly what I said," he responds, not budging an inch. "Your interactions are always exactly the same as Ruby and Sapphire, and Rayquaza knows how those two feel about each other. So I'm asking you."

He rests his head absentmindedly on his hands as he curls his ankles into a sitting position around the egg he has been trying to hatch. He had always teased the pair about the way they acted, like they were a couple of Luvdiscs that got lost during mating season. He would admit this very proudly. But he doubted that he and the girl in question were in any such relationship.

The blonde's frown does not leave its position, and a larger furrow finds its place between his overly long eyebrows. The boy with raven hair tugs on his goggles and wishes that he didn't know so many men who were so overprotective of their sisters.

He is grateful, however, that the other boy has left behind his stilts for the day; the conversation is already an awkward one for him as it is without a younger kid twice his size towering over him and oozing malice in his stance.

More importantly, he knows how much damage can be done through the power of those stilts.

He thinks about it, hard – or at least harder than he normally does. Answering no was out of the question, because that would express distaste; voicing even slight distaste for the person who was a sister figure to such a boy was not a smart thing to do, which he knew from experience. Besides, it wasn't true.

On the other hand, saying yes was just as dangerous and warranted a beating as well as a threat, at the very least. Not to mention his own pride in his privacy as a man. Whether that has to do with anything and if it is true is something he doesn't want to deal with just yet.

So he gives up, opens his hands up towards the ceiling, and says, quite honestly, that he has no clue.

This does not satisfy his opponent, however, and the smaller boy continues to glare at him. He scratches his head uncomfortably and decides a compromise is best, and suggests that once he reaches an answer about this girl, then the croissant-haired boy standing in front of him will be one of the first to know.

The glare does not leave. He asks why.

"What do you think?"

* * *

Because to everyone else, the answer is quite obvious.

* * *

**A/N: Second...POV? I have no idea. Though after looking over the style, I'm thinking Ibu rubbed off on me quite a bit. It was really easy to write this way, too. Weird.**

**By the by, if you haven't read her works, do. She's very good.**

**...I think I just made the understatement of the century. Amazing.**

**I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading!**


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